What I ate: First trimester

Everyone knows that the first trimester of pregnancy can be tricky when it comes to food. Even though I didn’t feel great, I really feel like I got off pretty easy. I never threw up, and though I definitely didn’t always feel like eating, there were only a few times when my stomach got the better of me and Andy was forced to fend for himself for dinner.

My biggest issue with the first trimester was the heatwave that settled in over Portland for most of the summer. We don’t have air conditioning, and the house got pretty toasty. Thankfully, I wasn’t in my 3rd trimester like my poor neighbor. Again, I was lucky!

The most unexpected thing I experienced was waking up during the middle of the night absolutely starving. Like my stomach was eating my spine starving. I started keeping LaraBars on my nightstand so I could have a quick snack. It didn’t take long though for those LaraBars to just not be enough to fill me up, so I’d have to get up and grab something (usually cheese) from the fridge. Andy was particularly amused at this because he would wake up to me crunching loudly from the other side of the bed.

Here’s a general list of things that worked, and didn’t work my first 12 weeks or so:

Yea’s– Cheese. I couldn’t always eat the same cheese from week to week, but I could usually find some kind of cheese that didn’t make me regret getting up in the morning.
– All-fruit popsicles. These were especially good when the weather was pushing 100 degrees.
– LaraBars. See above.
– Nuts. Occasionally.
– Ice cream. Sometimes. It wasn’t always my thing, but more often than not it worked!
– Fruit. Sometimes. Again, sometimes I wanted it, other times I didn’t.
– Rice cakes. I broke my no grains rule because I just needed something light to eat. These did the trick for a couple weeks. Now that I’m no longer queasy all the time, these have gone back on the no list.

Nay’s– Eggs. Couldn’t even stand the smell of them cooking. This one took some time getting over. There are still times when eating them turns my stomach a little bit, but it is getting better.
– Most animal proteins. I just really didn’t want to eat meat, which is something my body probably could have used. Ask me sometime about the night of sausage and eggs…
– Salad. It was so hot that I never wanted to turn on the stove, so salad was oftentimes my go to for dinner. That being said, it just didn’t do it for my stomach, and a lot of times I’d pick out the things I could eat (namely the cheese) and call it good.

Mostly the first 12 weeks were spent trying to sort out what my body actually wanted. I would get all fired up about a particular food, run to the store and buy it, and by the time I got home didn’t even want to look at it. It certainly wasn’t an easy period of time, but Andy was endlessly patient and we pulled through together.